East Anatolian Kurdish Rug

268 x 134 cm (8' 10" x 4' 5") Turkey, first half 19th century or before Condition: good, mostly good pile, dark brown partially corroded, scattered small professional restoriations, slight signs of use Published: "Seltene Orientteppiche IV", Eberhart Herrmann, 1982, plate 12 and "Teppiche aus dem Orient", Ulrich Schürmann, 1979, p. 81 Warp: wool, weft: wool, pile: wool The design of this extremely rare rug initially presents us with a few puzzles. In our search for comparable pieces, we first came across an example published by Alan Marcuson in HALI 2/2, p. 72. It features the same color scheme, a comparable border, and the characteristic palmettes with horizontal bars. However, this piece is less precisely executed, and in the center, slightly distorted palmettes - alternately facing right and left - appear in a staggered arrangement. A few years ago, another piece from the Naim Attallah Collection appeared at Sotheby's, auctioned on October 27, 2021, as Lot 271. A rug from the Keir Collection, published in "Islamic Carpets and Textiles", No. 70, shows the horizontally and vertically oriented palmettes already connected to one another; the border also resembles the lower border of our piece. "This carpet is a caricature of Herat and Indo-Isfahan carpets with their in-and-out, up-and-down arranged palmettes, which have been found throughout Kurdistan and the Caucasus since the 17th century," wrote Charles Grant Ellis regarding a piece in "Early Caucasian Rugs," Plate 37. As a further point of comparison, he cites a specimen in Kurt Erdmann's "Der orientalische Knüpfteppich," No. 114. Well, with all due respect to his opinion - today, it is precisely such independent, village-style interpretations that are particularly prized. Some of these rugs are grouped under the so-called "Golden Triangle" group, which Alberto Levi discusses in detail in HALI 214, pp. 100 ff. In particular, the pieces illustrated there, nos. 23, 24, and 25 - the latter being the specimen published by Marcuson - belong to this group, as does no. 26 from the Weise Collection; see also Austria Auction Company, Masterpieces IV, Lot 25. Estimate: € 10000 - 15000 Starting bid: € 7000

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